The Decline of Stealing Third Base: A Look at the Changing Trends in Baseball

Athletes like Elly De La Cruz can skew our perception of reality. His powerful arm makes most shortstops look like they throw with a wet noodle. His 99th-percentile sprint speed makes most other baserunners look like they’re running on sand. His tall frame, which our website somehow lists at 6-foot-2, makes that guy on Hinge who claims he’s 6-foot-2 look like he’s actually 5-foot-8. Oh, and his 13 steals of third base this year might make you think steals of third are at an all-time high, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

As a fan of highly specific baseball stats – a bold statement to make on this website, I know – I like to check in on the stolen base rates at each bag. Practically speaking, that means I pay particularly close attention to steals of third, the oft-forgotten middle child of stolen bases. Steals of third are too common to receive the same amount of attention as steals of home; at the same time, they’re infrequent enough that they’ll always be overshadowed by the sheer number of second-base steals.

Steals of home are almost guaranteed to make tomorrow morning’s highlight reel. Steals of second outnumber all others and thus dictate league-wide stolen base trends every year. Steals of third are stuck in the middle, and that’s especially true this season as their siblings are taking even more of the glory than usual.

The stolen base success rate at home (16-for-29, 55.2%) is the highest it’s been since at least 1969. Indeed, it’s above 50% for only the second time in that span. In addition, runners are on pace to steal home 36 times this year, which would rank second in the divisional era and well within shouting distance of first (38 SBH in 1998). Meanwhile, the overall stolen base rate (i.e. steals per game) is also on the rise, primarily driven by an increase in steals of second.

The league is on pace to steal second base 166 more times in 2024 than it did last year, a 5.6% increase, as runners continue to test the limits of the New Rules™. However, these more conspicuous developments are shrouding what might be the most interesting stolen base trend of the year. Steals of third are way down compared to last season, while the success rate has fallen to pre-rule change levels:

I first picked up on this peculiarity a couple of weeks into the season. Ben Clemens wrote about league-wide stolen base trends on April 11, noting that steals per game had not increased the way many presumed they would. Rather, baserunners were swiping bags a little less frequently than they had the year before. I was surprised to read this, so I went digging into the stolen base rates at each bag.

Through games on April 11, the league was on pace for 39 fewer steals of second (a 1.31% decrease) in 13 more attempts (a 0.3% increase) compared to last year. At third base, however, the league was on pace for 124 fewer steals (a 24.3% decrease) in 153 fewer attempts (a 25.4% decrease). Those were dramatic numbers, large enough to pique my interest even in such a small sample size. Still, I knew I needed to wait longer before drawing any conclusions.

Fast forward a month of baseball – from Spencer Strider’s devastating elbow surgery to Paul Skenes’s thrilling debut – and the overall stolen base rate was looking much healthier. Through games on May 12, the league was on pace to surpass its stolen base total from 2023 by more than 100 steals. Moreover, that all-encompassing number doesn’t do justice to the increase in stolen bases at second. Just past the quarter mark of the season, baserunners were on pace to steal second 225 more times than they had the year before.

Yet, as you might have guessed, that meant the numbers at third weren’t much better than they had been a month prior; the league was still on pace for a 25% decrease in SB3. One thing had changed, however. Runners were trying to steal third a little more often; they just weren’t succeeding.

Between April 11 and May 12, baserunners attempted to steal third 90 times in 421 games. That’s not so far off the pace from 2023 (605 attempts in 2,430 games). Unfortunately for those runners, they were successful only 66 times (73.3% success rate). That’s a shockingly low conversion rate.

The last time the SB3 success rate was so low over a full season was in 2002:

Fast forward again – past the release of bat tracking data and that epic Yankees-Dodgers series – and it’s getting harder and harder to ignore this trend. Between May 12 and today, the SB3 success rate is up slightly, but attempts have gone down again. Thus, the league is still on pace for a 24.1% drop-off compared to last season. Meanwhile, the SB3 success rate on the year is only 77.8%.

That’s right around where the success rate hovered before the rule changes; from 2015 to 2022, it never rose above 78.8% or fell below 76.7%. But in 2023, it jumped to 84.3%. To be clear, I’m not surprised the SB3 success rate is regressing. Evidently, the league determined the ideal SB3 success rate was somewhere around 77%, and there’s no reason the rules changes would significantly affect that.

What is confusing is that the SB3 success rate and attempt rate are so much lower than they were last season. In theory, the problem with a high stolen base success rate is that it suggests runners aren’t stealing enough. Yet, in this case, the success rate is down even though runners are attempting to steal third far less frequently: